Converts or Proselytes? The Conversion Crisis in the Early Church

There’s no such thing as a “culture-free” person. Each of us has his/her language, idioms, thought patterns, social customs and norms. Other people have their own distinct cultures. Even Jesus, God’s Son, was incarnated into the Jewish religion & culture; he ate kosher food, attended synagogue and observed Jewish feasts. Similarly there is no “culture free” church. Sometimes the early church is portrayed as a “blue-print” to be replicated in every society and era. Yet the early church was embedded in a particular (Jewish) culture. A simple replication is doomed to failure if it ignores the issue of culture. This question’s importance is manifest in the New Testament record of the problems encountered as the gospel spread from the original Jewish disciples to the surrounding Gentile nations. Prof. Andrew F. Walls has written perceptively on this issue and its implication for Christians & churches today. What follows is the first of a 3-part series which we hope will benefit the Church in Toronto. --- Nigel Tomes

By Andrew F. Walls

[Part 1 of a 3-part Series]

The Jewishness of the Early Church

The earliest church, as we meet it in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, was utterly Jewish. It was made up, virtually without exception, of people of Jewish birth and inheritance. They met every day in the [Jerusalem] temple (Acts 2:46), where they regularly attended “the prayers” (Acts 2:42), that is, the temple liturgy, thus congregating in a place where (beyond an outer court) none but Jews could go. Presiding over the church was James, the [half-] brother of Jesus, a man nicknamed “The Righteous” by his neighbors, who recognized that he was righteous in the Jewish sense of heartfelt obedience to the law.

Viewing Jesus as Fulfilling Israel’s Hopes

Whatever the differences among them in background and language—and that there were such differences, and that they had theological aspects, is clear from the record—they all saw Jesus and his work from the perspective of Israel’s history, hopes, and expectations. Their priorities and concerns are thoroughly Jewish: as the disillusioned disciple on the way to Emmaus says, they had seen Jesus as the One who would set Israel free (Luke 24:21). On the mount of ascension the preoccupation is the same. Realizing that they are standing at the threshold of a new era, the disciples ask the Lord if he is now about to give the kingdom back to Israel (Acts 1:6). They cannot conceive of Jesus’ saving work without its political climax in the history of Israel because, in Jewish terms, salvation is unintelligible without the salvation of the nation [of Israel]. Nor does Jesus deny this idea or tell them they have misunderstood his mission; he simply tells them that the times and seasons are in the Father’s hands (Acts 1:7).

Jesus—Messiah, Son of Man & Suffering Servant

There were, of course, things that marked out the company of Jesus believers from all other varieties of observant Jew. What outsiders would probably notice first was a distinctive lifestyle among these Jesus people. They shared property, making special provision for vulnerable sectors of the community such as widows. And they had frequent communal meals, eating in one another’s houses (Acts 2:44–46). In the sphere of belief, their most distinctive feature was their identification of 3 key figures in the Scriptures of Israel—[1] the Davidic Messiah who was the national savior, [2] the Son of Man who would figure in the judgment of the world, and [3] the Suffering Servant who sacrificed himself for his people—with the recent prophet and teacher Jesus of Nazareth.

Messianic Jewish Believers in Jesus

Jesus was universally known to have been put to death by the Romans, but the community vigorously asserted that he had risen from the dead. None of these things, however, meant that these people had taken on a new religion. Rather, these beliefs gave them deep insight into, and deeper understanding of, the religion they had always had. They did not even know that they were Christians; the word had not yet been coined (Acts 11:26). They needed no special name; they were Israel. They had no less reverence for the Torah [Moses’ Law] than before, but more; they remembered that Jesus had said that not the smallest letter of the law would be lost by his agency. They had not less reverence for the temple, but more, for they remembered how Jesus had cleansed it and called it his Father’s house, recalling the old scripture about the zeal of God’s house consuming his chosen one (John 2:17). They saw no reason to cease animal sacrifices; in the light of the Suffering Servant’s self-offering, they understood them better. Their favorite title for Jesus, Messiah, was steeped in the history of Israel and in convictions about Israel’s destiny. Jesus made sense of Jewish history; everything about him made sense in Jewish terms.

The Restored Remnant of Israel

This did not mean, however, that the Jesus community accepted the life of the Israel of that day. On the contrary, their preaching, as it is described in Acts, carries the note of crisis, a repeated call for decision. A new age had arrived; it was time for Israel to turn from the old ways (Acts 2:28–30). This note of crisis, focused on the call to turn, was not new. It was one of the dominating themes of the Scriptures of Israel. The root shubh occurs in the Hebrew Bible no less than 750 times with the sense of turning, or (in a causative form, with God as agent) in the sense of being turned, brought back, or restored. These uses are especially characteristic of the prophetic Scriptures. These often show Israel worshiping gods other than Yahweh [Jehovah], setting up a society marked by opulence, extortion, injustice, and oppression of the poor, giving Israel’s God a bad name among foreign nations (Isa. 2:6–18; 5:6–13, Ezek. 36:22). The consequences are defeat, occupation, and exile (Isa.1:1–9). But the same Scriptures use that same language of turning to show a process whereby God “turns the nation back” and restores it, rescuing the defeated nation, bringing back the exiles, and receiving the praise of a righteous, redeemed people (Isa. 51:11). Indeed, even when apostasy is rife, there is a “righteous remnant” that is the nucleus of the true Israel (Isa. 8:16–18; 10:20–22). The Messiah, the personal agent of God in restoring Israel, reigns forever over the restored nation with a rule that is unfailingly just and equitable (Isa. 11:1–5). Moral renewal follows inner transformation: people will adhere to God from their hearts (Jer. 31:31–34). And this change will herald universal renewal, in which the flora [flowers] and fauna [animals] and the whole environment are enriched and violence is unknown, and the Gentiles will acknowledge Yahweh as their own God (Isa. 11:6–9). The messianic age will bless the whole world. The recurrent call of the prophets is for Israel to turn to face the age to come; that is, the call to conversion.

John’s Baptism—Jews equal to Gentiles

Such is the framework within which that earliest church did its thinking. We see the framework even in the Synoptic Gospels. The focus of the Messiah’s work is the renewal of Israel. (The angel tells Joseph to name the child Jesus because he will save his people—that is, Israel—from their sins, Matt. 1:21.) The story of the ministry of Jesus has as a preface an account of John the Baptist—indeed, Mark even calls John’s ministry “the beginning of the Gospel” (Mark 1:1). The ministry of John, like that of the earlier prophets, is a call for turning—for conversion. He calls for radical change of mind (“repentance”) in the light of the establishment of God’s personal rule (“the kingdom of God,” see Matt. 3:1–11). And the change of mind is symbolized in the rite that gave “John the Dipper” his nickname. Almost certainly John [the Baptist] did not invent baptism. Something like it was already in use as a purification rite at the initiation of Gentiles who wished to enter Israel. It was a symbolic washing away of the filth of the heathen world. John’s revolution was to require the baptism of Jews; the covenant people, according to the preaching of John, needed cleansing as much as did any idolatrous Gentile. Jews who sought John’s baptism implicitly recognized their moral equivalence with Gentile outsiders.

Jerusalem Church—a Messianic Community, Restored Israel

The early chapters of Acts depict a community whose original members would have received John’s baptism, and whose whole education prepared them for the arrival of the messianic age, and with it the restoration and renewal of Israel. The community proclaims the arrival of the Messiah, and those who so recognize Jesus accept baptism, thus acknowledging their need for change of mind, and “receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38–39). In the prophetic writings the Spirit of God indicates a divine activity particularly marking the messianic age (Joel 2:28–32). Believers undergo a radical change of lifestyle; they share their property, share their meals, and give careful attention to marginalized people (Acts 2:43–45; 4:32–35; 6:1–4). In doing so, they turn away from the exploitative ways so often characteristic of the life of Israel, the things that the prophets had denounced. This is the messianic community, the community that has morally turned, a righteous community. Here is the evidence that the restoration of Israel has begun. Jesus is saving his people Israel, heirs of the prophetic promises and of the covenant, from their sins (Acts 3:24–26).

Jewish Life & Thought turned to Messiah Jesus

This church is completely Jewish in composition and thinking, Jewish at the very roots of its identity. There is no sign of their going into all the world to preach the Gospel to every creature [contra. Matt. 28:19]. The few people who joined the community from outside Israel—the family of Cornelius, the Samaritans, the Ethiopian eunuch—came, not through some evangelistic policy, but through what one might call divine or providential nudges; and all, even if not accepted as Israelites, were already worshipers of Israel’s God. In the church of the early chapters of Acts, the traditional institutions of Israel—Torah [Moses’ Law], temple, sacrificial [system & worship]— keep their ancient place. That church made a profound impact on its society, so that many thousands of zealous Torah-keeping Jews came forward to share in the messianic restoration of Israel and share in the times of refreshing that the restoration brings (Acts 3:19–20). But even as servants of Messiah Jesus, they were still zealous for the Torah [Moses’ law] (Acts 21:20). This is Jewish life and Jewish thought—but it is Jewish life and thought converted. It is life lived, and thinking done, in terms of the messianic age, long spoken of as the Age to Come, and now arrived: inaugurated by the Messiah, just as the prophets had said would happen. This is Jewish life and thought turned toward Messiah Jesus.

INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 1, Jan., 2004, pp. 2-6